Jack Whyte - The Saxon Shore

"Hmm . . ." A long, contemplative silence followed that musing sound, and I made no attempt to break it. The boy was deep in thought. Finally he nodded his head gently. "So it's the leader who's important. It doesn't matter what he rules; empire, kingdom, town or fort. It's him, and the example that he sets, that inspires other men to fight for him and win."

"Aye, that's right, and the winning is very important. Never forget, Arthur, that in order to win, men must want to fight. . . And bear in mind, that doesn't necessarily hold true when you reverse it. It's not the same to say that to fight, men must want to win. Not at all the same. But to win, men must want to fight, they must be inspired, willing to follow their leader to the death. That willingness to die achieving victory for another man's purposes only results from great and inspiring leadership. No sane man will willingly follow someone he detests or disrespects. He might be constrained to do it, forced to fight, but then he'll never fight for any other purpose than to save his own life, and that means he'll never fight enthusiastically, to win a great victory for his leader. The lesson is ended. Out with you, now! I have work to finish here . . ." I paused, suddenly seeing the troubled expression on his face. "What? What is it?"

He shook his head, as though to dislodge an annoying thought. "Can't a bad man be a good leader, though? Not all victories have been won by great leaders, and some great leaders have been defeated. Isn't that true?"

"Yes, it is." His face remained clouded. "You seem perplexed. What's troubling you, Arthur?" There was a long silence.

"Was. . . was my father a good leader, Merlyn?"

The unexpectedness of the question, and the tremulous tone in which it was posed almost overwhelmed me, and I was suddenly and fully aware that this was an eight-year-old boy who spoke to me. Even as I write the words now, they appear fatuous in their presumption that I could have been unaware of such a thing, but in dealing with Arthur Pendragon, even in his extreme youth, it was impossible not to treat him as a perceptive and intuitive intellect, far older than his years. Now, with one question, he had reestablished his youthfulness and insecurity. The logical, analytical thinker was banished, and the tentative, unformed boy revealed. He had never known his father, Uther Pendragon, and we seldom spoke of him, simply, I believed, because he had never directly influenced the boy's life. Because of that, until this moment, had anyone asked me I would have opined that the boy seldom thought of the father he had never known. Now, with that one question, I knew otherwise, and I knew also that it was time to deal with my neglect. I leaned back and crossed my arms on my chest, considering my next words carefully. Arthur sat watching me tensely.

"Your father was not simply a good leader, Arthur, he was a superb leader. His men would have followed him anywhere—and they did. He was the best we had."

"Better than you, Merlyn?"

I smiled. "Aye, lad, far better me than me in many, many ways. He was bolder, more ferocious, more high-spirited and valorous. Uther Pendragon was a truly mighty warrior."

A beat of silence, then: "But was he a good man?"

"None finer. He might not have been good in the way bishops and other churchmen would like us to be good—always at prayer and full of piety— but your father was good in the way of simple nobility, justice and kindness. Some might have thought him wild and undisciplined, but he had a gentleness in him to match the wild rages that could sometimes sweep him, and his self-discipline was absolute, in its own fashion . . . And he harmed none who did not harm him." A very large portion of my mind was writhing in discomfort with my own memories of what I had once believed of Uther, but I dared show no discomfort here, and I knew well that the guilt causing these feelings was mine alone and had nothing to do with Uther as he was and had been.

"He was defeated and killed."

"He was killed in a skirmish, Arthur; struck down from behind in a wild scuffle in dense woods, and the man who killed him didn't know who he was. It was an accident of war, not a death in formal battle, defeated in the field."

"But he was defeated in battle, was he not? His armies were destroyed." This was growing difficult. I nodded to emphasize my words.

"Yes, he was defeated in a battle. His army was defeated on one occasion. But it was one army, and it was not large, and he had been in the field for long months without respite, and Lot of Cornwall caught him between three armies, two of those fresh and unblooded. There was no grand strategy involved, no contest between generals. Lot had more men, and they were fresh; your father had fewer and they were tired."

He sat staring at me, his face unreadable. To fill the silence, I began counting to myself. I had reached twenty before the boy spoke again.

"If he was a good leader, he should have known Lot was trying to entrap him. A leader's first responsibility is to the men under his command. You always say that."

"Well, yes, I do, and that's true . . ." I found myself trapped by my own lessons. "But—"

"There can be no buts, Merlyn. I've heard you say, many times, that command responsibility has no buts in it."

I silently cursed the exactness of his memory, but could not deny what he had said. I tried prevarication, not expecting it to be successful. "That is true, too, Arthur, but there are always exceptions to any rule. This occasion was one of those exceptions. Your father was concerned for you and your mother at the time. You were but new born and she was barely recovered from your birth, and still unfit to travel."

"Then he should have sent us away to safety with some of his men. He should have remained to command his army."

"No, Arthur, I cannot allow you to condemn your father this way. You were not there. I was, although I was too far away to be of assistance to him. Your father was dealing with Lot of Cornwall—a liar, a treacherous coward and a weakling. Lot hired alien mercenaries from beyond the seas to do his fighting for him. He won by deviousness and perfidy, and he made sure that he himself was never in the slightest danger. Someone killed him on the day your father died, for I found his body hanging from a tree, but I don't believe it was any of ours who brought about his death. I believe one of Lot's own killed him, perhaps for vengeance, since Lot was open-handed with his treachery, abusing friend and foe alike. Your father, had he not been killed the way he was, stabbed in the back in a petty woodland brawl, would have emerged the victor in Cornwall that very day. He had fought for that victory, and he had earned it. His untimely death in that woods was a tragedy."

"A tragedy that might have been avoided, had he not permitted my mother and me to divert him from his duty."

I blinked at the boy in disbelief, seeing the rigid, unyielding lines of pain in his young face. "Arthur, how can you even think such a thing? That is simply not true!"

He glared at me, pale faced. "Women and war do not mix. You told me that yourself, only last week. If Mark Antony had not become involved with Cleopatra of Egypt, you said, all history would have been different. That involvement was Antony's tragedy."

I had said exactly that, but now I denied it without the slightest hesitation. "Nothing of the kind," I snapped. "The Queen was the means of Antony's downfall, but Antony's true tragedy was that he was pitted against an even greater leader than himself, Octavius Caesar, who was destined to become Caesar Augustus, Caesar the Great, first Emperor of Rome."

The boy sat blinking at me now, his face less bleak looking, and I watched him review what I had said, absorbing the possibility that the tragedy I had mentioned might not be the tragedy he had understood. I spoke on, making my own point now, attempting to ameliorate his.